Benghazi: The Selective Memory of Republicans...And The Media

Okay, this is what I want to know. Did everyone in the free world all of a sudden forget that it was not the Obama administration but the protestors on the ground in Libya who actually first stated that the reason they were protesting was because of the anti-Islam video, Innocence of Muslims?

Before the Obama administration had issued any findings whatsoever regarding the potential cause of the attacks, protestors were on international television demonstrating and screaming about this obscure video that practically no one had even heard of before and had been re-released just a few weeks prior. So, when the people on the ground who are actually doing the protesting are telling you that the reason they are protesting is because of some anti-Muslim video, then why would the U.S. Government NOT believe them.

As reporting at the time revealed, it was the protestors themselves who first stated that the reason they were angry and demonstrating was because of the anti-Muslim video (and might I say that the media ran with it) so why is it being conveniently forgotten that the “facts on the ground” (as our military lovers like to say) showed a completely different view of the attacks and the reason behind them than what would later come out?

If later, more clear-eyed intelligence proved that there was another underlying cause for the attack then so be it, but trying to make it seem like the Obama administration out and out lied and made up some outlandish story about the anti-Muslim video being the cause of the Libya attack when even the protestors on the ground were indicating that as the reason for their anger is ludicrous.

The selective memory of people ever ceases to amaze me!

BTW, while we are asking questions, let’s see if the media can pull its head up from the Republican talking points long enough to ask our OUTRAGED Republicans in Congress why they voted just a few short years ago to cut Embassy security funding by hundreds of millions of dollars.

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security” — a charge Republicans rejected.

Ryan, Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan’s budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.

This article was published in October 2012 but I’m guessing that in the heat of a presidential election campaign it was not the shiny object of the moment thus garnered very little attention.

Okay, so let me see if I got this right. These “concerned” Republicans are now blaming the Obama administration for the security (or lack thereof) at the embassy in Libya after they voted against the Obama administration and cut the funding for embassy security…and no one is asking them about this? SERIOUSLY?

Well now the election is over and I think while we have Republicans arguing about lapses in embassy security and trying everything under the sun to lay it at President Obama’s feet, don’t you think it would behoove someone, anyone to ask them about what part their own decisions might have played in those lapses?!